The Sittaford Mystery

‘No, sir, not that I could see.’

‘Ah! Now I understand, Evans, that you have lately got married.’

‘Yes, sir. Mrs Belling’s daughter at the Three Crowns. Matter of two months ago, sir.’

‘And Captain Trevelyan was not overpleased about it.’

A very faint grin appeared for a moment on Evans’s face.

‘Cut up rough about it, he did, the Capting. My Rebecca is a fine girl, sir, and a very good cook. And I hoped we might have been able to do for the Capting together, but he—he wouldn’t hear of it. Said he wouldn’t have women servants about his house. In fact, sir, things were rather at a deadlock when this South African lady came along and wanted to take Sittaford House for the winter. The Capting he rented this place, I came in to do for him every day, and I don’t mind telling you, sir, that I had been hoping that by the end of the winter the Capting would have come round to the idea; and that me and Rebecca would go back to Sittaford with him. Why, he would never even know she was in the house. She would keep to the kitchen, and she would manage so that he would never meet her on the stairs.’

‘Have you any idea what lay behind Captain Trevelyan’s dislike of women?’

‘Nothing to it, sir. Just an ’abit, sir, that’s all. I have seen many a gentleman like it before. If you ask me, it’s nothing more or less than shyness. Some young lady or other gives them a snub when they are young—and they gets the ’abit.’

‘Captain Trevelyan was not married?’

‘No, indeed, sir.’

‘What relations had he? Do you know?’

‘I believe he had a sister living at Exeter, sir, and I think I have heard him mention a nephew or nephews.’

‘None of them ever came to see him?’

‘No, sir. I think he quarrelled with his sister at Exeter.’

‘Do you know her name?’

‘Gardner, I think, sir, but I wouldn’t be sure.’

‘You don’t know her address?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t, sir.’

‘Well, doubtless we shall come across that in looking through Captain Trevelyan’s papers. Now, Evans, what were you yourself doing from four o’clock onwards yesterday afternoon?’

‘I was at home, sir.’

‘Where’s home?’

‘Just round the corner, sir, 85 Fore Street.’

‘You didn’t go out at all?’

‘Not likely, sir. Why, the snow was coming down a fair treat.’

‘Yes, yes. Is there anyone who can support your statement?’

‘Beg pardon, sir.’

‘Is there anyone who knows that you were at home during that time?’

‘My wife, sir.’

‘She and you were alone in the house?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well, well, I have no doubt that’s all right. That will be all for the present, Evans.’

The ex-sailor hesitated. He shifted from one foot to the other.

‘Anything I can do here, sir—in the way of tidying up?’

‘No—the whole place is to be left exactly as it is for the present.’

‘I see.’

‘You had better wait, though, until I have had a look round,’ said Narracott, ‘in case there might be any question I want to ask you.’

‘Very good, sir.’

Inspector Narracott transferred his gaze from Evans to the room.

The interview had taken place in the dining-room. On the table an evening meal was set out. A cold tongue, pickles, a Stilton cheese and biscuits, and on a gas ring by the fire a saucepan containing soup. On the sideboard was a tantalus, a soda water siphon, and two bottles of beer. There was also an immense array of silver cups and with them—a rather incongruous item—three very new-looking novels.

Inspector Narracott examined one or two of the cups and read the inscriptions on them.

‘Bit of a sportsman, Captain Trevelyan,’ he observed.

‘Yes, indeed, sir,’ said Evans. ‘Been an athlete all his life, he had.’

Inspector Narracott read the titles of the novels. ‘Love Turns the Key’, ‘The Merry Men of Lincoln’, ‘Love’s Prisoner’.

‘H’m,’ he remarked. ‘The Captain’s taste in literature seems somewhat incongruous.’

‘Oh! that, sir.’ Evans laughed. ‘That’s not for reading, sir. That’s the prizes he won in these Railway Pictures Names Competitions. Ten solutions the Capting sent in under different names, including mine, because he said 85 Fore Street was a likely address to give a prize to! The commoner your name and address the more likely you were to get a prize in the Capting’s opinion. And sure enough a prize I got—but not the £2,000, only three new novels—and the kind of novels, in my opinion, that no one would ever pay money for in a shop.’

Narracott smiled, then again mentioning that Evans was to wait, he proceeded on his tour of inspection. There was a large kind of cupboard in one corner of the room. It was almost a small room in itself. Here, packed in unceremoniously, were two pairs of skis, a pair of sculls mounted, ten or twelve hippopotamus tusks, rods and lines and various fishing tackle including a book of flies, a bag of golf clubs, a tennis racket, an elephant’s foot stuffed and mounted and a tiger skin. It was clear that, when Captain Trevelyan had let Sittaford House furnished, he had removed his most precious possessions, distrustful of female influence.

‘Funny idea—to bring all this with him,’ said the Inspector. ‘The house was only let for a few months, wasn’t it?’

‘That’s right, sir.’

‘Surely these things could have been locked up at Sittaford House?’

For the second time in the course of the interview, Evans grinned.